TechCrunch Mobility: A new, bigger AV boom is here

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I’ve joked here and on the Equity and Autonocast podcasts that the autonomous vehicle industry feels a lot like 2016, at least in terms of the buzziness surrounding the sector. But a recent conversation with Trucks VC partner Puneeth Meruva has me rethinking that comparison. There’s evidence that 2026 is even hotter — at least by certain measures — than those frothy dealmaking days of 2016 and 2017.

我曾在这里以及 Equity 和 Autonocast 播客中开玩笑说，自动驾驶汽车行业感觉很像 2016 年，至少在围绕该行业的炒作热度方面是如此。但最近与 Trucks VC 合伙人 Puneeth Meruva 的一次谈话让我重新思考了这种比较。有证据表明，至少从某些指标来看，2026 年比 2016 年和 2017 年那些泡沫化的交易时期还要火爆。

Trucks VC, which specializes in early-stage investing, has fielded pitches from 81 new autonomous vehicle startups so far in 2026 — two-thirds more than last year and enough to surpass the boom years of a decade ago. The VC firm argues in a new blog post that we’re in the midst of a second, even bigger AV wave fueled by technological breakthroughs. Yes, I’m talking about AI.

专注于早期投资的 Trucks VC 在 2026 年迄今为止已经收到了 81 家新的自动驾驶汽车初创公司的融资方案——比去年增加了三分之二，足以超过十年前的繁荣时期。该风投公司在一篇新的博客文章中指出，我们正处于由技术突破推动的第二波、规模更大的自动驾驶浪潮之中。没错，我说的就是人工智能。

“For a long time AV companies were trying to go from what was AV 1.0 to AV 2.0, which is kind of this holy grail end-to-end architecture for AVs,” Meruva told me. “And I think the foundation models now provide a technical architecture that makes those end-to-end systems possible.”

“长期以来，自动驾驶公司一直试图从所谓的自动驾驶 1.0 过渡到 2.0，这是一种类似于自动驾驶领域‘圣杯’的端到端架构，”Meruva 告诉我。“我认为基础模型现在提供了一种技术架构，使得这些端到端系统成为可能。”

These foundational models are particularly good at generalizing across different environments and scenarios, potentially making AVs cheaper and faster to deploy. The arrival of powerful open source models like Nvidia’s Alpamayo and Qwen’s general-purpose vision-language-action models has made it even easier for startups to get off the ground.

这些基础模型特别擅长在不同的环境和场景中进行泛化，这可能使自动驾驶汽车的部署成本更低、速度更快。英伟达的 Alpamayo 和通义千问（Qwen）的通用视觉-语言-动作模型等强大开源模型的出现，使得初创公司更容易起步。

The barrier to entry is lower than ever before. Meruva said Trucks is consistently seeing startups deploy within a few months and with less than $1 million raised. (And while Meruva wouldn’t name names, the firm has invested in some of them.)

准入门槛比以往任何时候都要低。Meruva 表示，Trucks 经常看到初创公司在几个月内就完成部署，且融资额不到 100 万美元。（虽然 Meruva 没有透露具体名称，但该公司已经投资了其中一些企业。）

Of these 81 startups that pitched Trucks VC, I mistakenly assumed most would be applying their AV tech to construction, warehouse, agriculture, and mining. And yes, those were in the mix. But what surprised me was the growing number of startups pitching pure-play robotaxi businesses. And many are positioning themselves as direct competitors to Waymo.

在向 Trucks VC 寻求融资的 81 家初创公司中，我错误地以为大多数会将自动驾驶技术应用于建筑、仓储、农业和采矿业。确实，这些领域也包含在内。但让我惊讶的是，越来越多的初创公司在推销纯粹的自动驾驶出租车业务。而且许多公司将自己定位为 Waymo 的直接竞争对手。

As wild and galaxy brain-thinking as that may sound, Meruva thinks there is room for smaller players. “In this world, smaller, more niche autonomy companies can compete — maybe they’re not competing with Waymo on a global scale, but maybe they’re competing in specific regions or specific types of routes,” he said. And Meruva doesn’t see the pace flattening. He expects even more AV startups to pitch the firm next year.

尽管这听起来有些疯狂且异想天开，但 Meruva 认为小型参与者仍有空间。“在这个世界里，规模较小、更细分的自动驾驶公司是可以竞争的——也许它们不会在全球范围内与 Waymo 竞争，但它们可能会在特定地区或特定类型的路线上竞争，”他说。Meruva 认为这种势头不会放缓。他预计明年会有更多的自动驾驶初创公司向该公司寻求融资。

Regular readers of this newsletter know we’ve been closely following Slate Auto — breaking the original story on Jeff Bezos’ investment way back in April 2025. But the company it spun out of is what got our attention this week. Re:Build, a Massachusetts-based manufacturing accelerator, raised $2.1 billion to “expand Re:Build’s capacity to manufacture hard tech products and launch new industrial startups.”

本通讯的常客都知道，我们一直在密切关注 Slate Auto——早在 2025 年 4 月就率先报道了杰夫·贝索斯（Jeff Bezos）的投资消息。但本周引起我们关注的是它所脱离的公司。总部位于马萨诸塞州的制造加速器 Re:Build 筹集了 21 亿美元，旨在“扩大 Re:Build 制造硬科技产品的能力并启动新的工业初创公司”。

The investment was led by General Catalyst and JPMorganChase’s Strategic Investment Group. Other investors weren’t disclosed. The company, which was co-founded by Amazon’s former commercial CEO Jeff Wilke, has billed itself as “America’s answer to Shenzhen.”

此次投资由 General Catalyst 和摩根大通的战略投资集团领投。其他投资者未披露。该公司由亚马逊前商业首席执行官杰夫·威尔克（Jeff Wilke）共同创立，自称为“美国对深圳的回应”。

Bedrock Robotics raised $600 million in a funding round that values the autonomous vehicle technology startup at $4.1 billion. CapitalG and Emergence Capital co-led the Series C round. New investors US Innovative Technology Fund (USIT), Bessemer Venture Partners, and Temasek participated in the round, alongside existing investors 8VC, Georgian, Valor Equity Partners, Xora, Eclipse, Perry Creek Capital, and Nvidia.

Bedrock Robotics 在一轮融资中筹集了 6 亿美元，使这家自动驾驶技术初创公司的估值达到 41 亿美元。CapitalG 和 Emergence Capital 共同领投了这轮 C 轮融资。新投资者美国创新技术基金（USIT）、Bessemer Venture Partners 和淡马锡参与了本轮融资，现有投资者 8VC、Georgian、Valor Equity Partners、Xora、Eclipse、Perry Creek Capital 和英伟达也参与其中。

DoorDash has agreed to acquire Instacart for $17 billion. Meanwhile, DoorDash noted in its third-quarter earnings that it has, so far, only received a few hundred orders from AI agents.

DoorDash 已同意以 170 亿美元收购 Instacart。与此同时，DoorDash 在其第三季度财报中指出，到目前为止，它仅收到了来自人工智能代理的几百份订单。

PreScalar, a San Francisco-based startup developing software and testing infrastructure for factories, raised $7 million in seed funding co-led by Dynamo Ventures and BMW i Ventures, with participation from Blue Wire Capital, Uplift Ventures, and Antler. The startup was founded last year by a trio who had stints at Cruise, Google, Rivian, and Waymo.

PreScalar 是一家总部位于旧金山的初创公司，致力于为工厂开发软件和测试基础设施，该公司筹集了 700 万美元的种子资金，由 Dynamo Ventures 和 BMW i Ventures 共同领投，Blue Wire Capital、Uplift Ventures 和 Antler 参与投资。该初创公司由三位曾在 Cruise、谷歌、Rivian 和 Waymo 工作过的人士于去年创立。

Elroy Air, a startup developing autonomous heavy-cargo drones for defense, rapid response, and commercial logistics, hired Jeremy Hux as its CFO in preparation for going public.

Elroy Air 是一家开发用于国防、快速响应和商业物流的自动驾驶重型货运无人机的初创公司，该公司聘请了 Jeremy Hux 担任首席财务官，为上市做准备。

Ford announced two new EV chargers that will allow its forthcoming Fathom pickup truck to serve as a battery capable of delivering power to the home or grid.

福特宣布推出两款新的电动汽车充电器，这将使其即将推出的 Fathom 皮卡车能够充当电池，为家庭或电网供电。

GM is embracing hybrids now. Times sure have changed! The U.S. automaker is also trying to move past the driver data-selling controversy from several years ago. GM agreed to a $220 million settlement with 36 states (its settlement with California and the Federal Trade Commission happened earlier) to settle allegations that it illegally sold private driving behavior and location information to data brokers.

通用汽车现在开始拥抱混合动力车了。时代确实变了！这家美国汽车制造商也正试图摆脱几年前的驾驶员数据出售争议。通用汽车同意与 36 个州达成 2.2 亿美元的和解协议（其与加利福尼亚州和联邦贸易委员会的和解已于早些时候达成），以解决有关其非法向数据经纪人出售私人驾驶行为和位置信息的指控。

Kodiak AI will deliver 75 self-driving trucks to freight company DTL Transport starting in 2028. It’s the company’s first binding commercial deal for driverless big rigs that will run on public highways.

Kodiak AI 将从 2028 年开始向货运公司 DTL Transport 交付 75 辆自动驾驶卡车。这是该公司首个关于将在公共高速公路上运行的无人驾驶大型卡车的具有约束力的商业协议。

Rivian reported its third-quarter earnings, and a few items stood out to us. For one, the new R2 has been successful enough for the company to raise its 2026 delivery guidance by a couple thousands vehicles. Rivian, which had previously expected to deliver between 65,000 and 70,000 EVs this year, bumped up that floor to 67,000.

Rivian 公布了其第三季度财报，其中有几点引起了我们的注意。首先，新款 R2 的成功足以让该公司将其 2026 年的交付预期提高了几千辆。Rivian 此前预计今年将交付 6.5 万至 7 万辆电动汽车，现已将下限提高至 6.7 万辆。

But here is another potentially lucrative development: The $5.8 billion joint venture between Rivian and Volkswagen Group is expanding to include AI assistants. No word yet on whether that means VW will invest even more money into Rivian.

但这里还有另一个潜在的有利可图的发展：Rivian 与大众汽车集团之间 58 亿美元的合资企业正在扩大范围，将人工智能助手纳入其中。目前尚不清楚这是否意味着大众汽车将向 Rivian 投入更多资金。

Tesla turns to Turo to boost adoption of Full Self-Driving (Supervised). Waymo and

特斯拉转向 Turo 以提高全自动驾驶（受监督）的采用率。Waymo 和